Computing systems range from simple systems having one or two central processing units (CPU's) to complex systems having many nodes, each node having up to forty or more CPU's.
It is common for computing systems to have time periods when computing resources (e.g., processor time, network bandwidth, etc.), which are not used for processing computing jobs, are available. The number and quantity of available resources often depends on the size of the computing system involved. Larger computing systems with more overall capability and available resources than smaller systems may have a large amount of resources available during certain time periods.
Further, some computing systems may have unused computing resources at a time when another computing system may have more computing jobs than can possibly be handled by that system. To maximize utilization of resources, operators of computing systems with unused resources offer those resources to external computing systems. External systems using those resources send packets of data to the offering computing system, and those packets are processed in due course with all other packets arriving from other sources, without regard for the source or purpose of the packet.